Mayanisms in the Book of Mormon

[J Green]

Discovering true parallels--especially textual ones--can be difficult. Robert Alter writes some useful stuff on what he calls "type-scenes", but I really like Jeffery M. Leonard's approach in "Identifying Inner-Biblical Allusions: Psalm 78 as a Test Case" JBL, Vol 127, No. 2 (Summer 2008). He lays down a pretty good methodology (8 criteria) based on looking at shared points of contact. Of course, this is difficult with the BOM because we don't have the source text but only the translation. Which means the discussion (as it does here) always come back to the translation.

[Benjamin McGuire]

beastie writes:

Joseph "sees", somehow, Nephites using tapirs for food, and since the animal is not familiar to him, writes "horses and chariots". Joseph "sees", somehow, an atlatl, but since he has no idea what that is, uses the most proximate description he can think of - bows and arrows.

What if Nephi uses the Egyptian word "horse" (the same word he uses from Isaiah to mean horse) when writing to indicate something that we might call by another name? I am certain your overly simplistic description - along with your assumptions - represents a very narrow view of translation which probably won't match what most proponents of a loose translation would believe about the process. This makes such criticisms rather problematic unless some common ground is reached.

[beastie]

What if Nephi uses the Egyptian word "horse" (the same word he uses from Isaiah to mean horse) when writing to indicate something that we might call by another name? I am certain your overly simplistic description - along with your assumptions - represents a very narrow view of translation which probably won't match what most proponents of a loose translation would believe about the process. This makes such criticisms rather problematic unless some common ground is reached.

I do remember this is your stance.

I don't believe most "loose translationists" would agree with you, but perhaps I'm wrong.

And, of course, this doesn't resolve the underlying challenge that also applies to loose translation: when there is some translation artifact or misnaming, whether it be on the part of Nephi or JS, the context behind the misnomer must be coherent. IOW, there must be an "animal X" that would make the context make sense. As I believe you've mentioned before, the "horse and chariot" formula must be considered.

(no, that isn't an invitation to restart the horse debate... I believe I'm as sick of it as anyone, it's just an example of my point)

JGreen:

Thanks for your input.

Which means the discussion (as it does here) always come back to the translation.

Yes, and sometimes it appears "translation" becomes a black box, a way to make problems disappear.

[Jeff K.]

Or, you could simply be making something out of nothing. "Translation" is not a black box, it is however a complicated issue in which several distinct interpretations occur. To those who are somewhat simplistic in their outlook, I am sure it does look like a black box. Usually they are unilingual with a limited understanding of how even the most simple translations can be more difficult than one presumes.

[beastie]

Thanks for your input, Jeff.

[Jeff K.]

Speaking more than one language has given me insight as to how difficult the changing interpretation of words can be. Even within the same culture, the textual meaning can change so much over decades as to make one form of the word less meaningful and even forgotten.

[Olavarria]

BTW, I voted for option 1.

[ebeddoulos]

Speaking more than one language has given me insight as to how difficult the changing interpretation of words can be. Even within the same culture, the textual meaning can change so much over decades as to make one form of the word less meaningful and even forgotten.

To illustrate Jeff's point so that a unilingual might better understand, I offer the following:

Today's gay parade was marred by a single act of violence. "That mother hit me!" screamed Jim Jones.

When I was a kid, mother was what you called a female parent and gay was synonimous with happy. Do you think the word choice used in translating the sentences might be different today from that used back in the 1950s? Would one use a loose translation? or tight translation? or a combination?

[beastie]

For those of you who seem to feel I don't understand the intricacies of the translation process, please reread my post 24 on this thread.

I also think some of you misunderstand what the terms "loose" and "tight" translation indicate in this particular context. Tight means that JS was a reader, reading words off a stone. Loose means JS "got" the story in some unstated, gestalt fashion, and chose his own words.

Neither one of these scenarios are talking about the intricacies of translation in that translators can't always preserve meaning by translating "word for word". In both scenarios the "translator" would sometimes be translating "word for word", and sometimes be translating to preserve meaning, as with metaphors. The difference is WHO the translator is. In "tight" translation, JS isn't a translator at all, but a reader. God or God's agent translated the words and put them on the stone for JS to read. JS' job was to have enough faith to cause the words to appear. In this setting, translation artifacts cannot be ascribed to JS, but must be ascribed to God or God's agent. In "loose" translation, JS is the translator, and is putting into his own words any image or idea that came to him somehow.

In neither process is JS actually reading the text off the gold plates and trying to figure out the best way to capture the meaning in English, which is what happens in a normal translation process.

[juliann]

In neither process is JS actually reading the text off the gold plates and trying to figure out the best way to capture the meaning in English, which is what happens in a normal translation process.

Even if we set aside the absurdity of someone who thinks the entire thing is a sham setting up the rules about how it all works, you are still left with a false dilemma set-up that the other side doesn't take seriously. If you are going to push this you must represent the viewpoints of LDS scholars accurately.

[beastie]

ven if we set aside the absurdity of someone who thinks the entire thing is a sham setting up the rules about how it all works, you are still left with a false dilemma set-up that the other side doesn't take seriously. If you are going to push this you must represent the viewpoints of LDS scholars accurately.

I'm not "setting up the rules". This is what contemporary sources report - he wasn't looking at the gold plates most of the time.

[Benjamin McGuire]

The challenge Beastie, is with the "somehow". Even proponents of the loose translation include the "power of God" in there someplace. What does Joseph get? Is it the text as Nephi intended it? Is it the text as Nephi actually wrote it (not necessarily the same thing)? Is it Nephi's text likened unto himself (i.e. Joseph)? I think that each of these kinds of different scenarios will more than superficially alter the perspective on what the "loose translation" means, and its difficult to simply throw it all together and expect a coherent narrative which somehow meets all the different ways of looking at this. The same is true (but to a far lesser extent) of the discussion when using a tight translation model simply because as you note, Joseph's role and contributions can be defined much more easily (although perhaps not completely consistently). After all, Joseph does contribute the language (if we assume that Joseph is typical of the intended audience conceived of by the divine translator), and so on.

The one major difference is that for loose theories we expect Joseph to have a better grasp on the meaning of the text he produces (i.e. the English Book of Mormon) than we do for a tight translation, where Joseph is merely a reader subject to the other constraints we normally associate with readers.